Analysis of the Research Infrastructure Needs in Emerging Interdisciplinary Consortia

Background The formative stage of a research consortium is particularly important from the perspective of a research infrastructure (RI) provider. During this period, intensive discussions, experience exchanges, and project planning can accelerate the adoption of FAIR and Open Science (OS) practices, as well as the use of specific research infrastructure components. Interdisciplinary and diverse medical research consortia, in particular, may benefit from the consulting support of RI experts, as the challenges of data harmonisation, varying levels of data sensitivity, and the need for integrative data flows can be overwhelming and risk being overlooked [1, 2, 3]. Methods In the framework of the 2024 NFDI4Health call "Wissenstransfer durch Vielfalt: Innovative Ansätze zur Kommunikation und Fortbildung in der NFDI4Health", we initiated the project "NFDI4Health solutions in supporting communication during the formation process of multidisciplinary research consortia. Use case: consortium for neuropathic pain research ScionPain". ScionPain is an interdisciplinary consortium that has assembled to submit a DFG proposal to establish a Clinical Research Group. In 2024, we organised 2 on-site workshops at the Scientific Centre for Neuropathic Pain Aachen SCNAACHEN and a series of online workshops and brainstorming sessions to establish bidirectional communication between NFDI4Health and the ScionPain research community. On one hand, we presented relevant NFDI4Health instruments, particularly Local Data Hubs [4] and the Central Health Study Hub [5], and discussed the developed project-level metadata schema [6]. On the other hand, through interviews and distributed surveys, we collected the information regarding the existing FAIR and OS solutions used in the individual research groups, collaborative and integrative infrastructure, and the needs and challenges. Findings The project revealed that many individual research groups achieved remarkable progress in data FAIR-ification and local research infrastructure, and pointed out community interest in further integrative advancements, in particular via NFDI tools. At the same time, we observed large variations between the individuals and teams regarding the adoption and intention of adoption of NFDI tools and FAIR practices in a collaborative interdisciplinary context. One of the major reported challenges, specific to medical research, was the fact that many consortium members are combining the roles of a medical professional and researcher. Additionally, the process of medical data collection is very time-consuming due to the technical, ethical, and legal aspects, while the establishment of advanced, collaborative open science practices and FAIR processes receives little support and positive feedback in terms of tangible academic achievements. The initial threshold of necessary time and effort investment remains very high, while the perceived gains are not reaching the critical mass for well-scalable cross-domain change, despite the rich landscape of successful individual domain-specific solutions. Conclusions Our work shows that active support of emerging consortia, particularly regarding integrative and collaborative solutions, is an important direction for organisations working towards FAIR and OS adaptations and research infrastructure. More financial support needs to be provided to establish functional processes when it comes to interdisciplinary and integrative research. However, apart from the financial aspect, the practical support of research quality assessments such as DORA [7] needs to be established, and medical research, historically highly competitive, requires a dedicated line of community discussion regarding the shift towards collaborative work, open science, and data sharing [8, 9].